Paul Kiel May 2, 2007, 5:32 PM

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty is supposedly the #2 at the Department of Justice, acting essentially as the COO to Alberto Gonzales’ CEO. He’s supposed to be the career guy who gets his hands dirty, who’s really running the department.

But listen to the way he has reportedly described his role in the U.S. Attorney firings. From The Las Vegas Sun:

A Justice Department official who had been uncomfortable about firing U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden now regrets he could not save the Nevadan’s job when Justice purged eight prosecutors last year.

In a closed-door interview with congressional investigators last week, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said the firing weighs on him heavily, according to an aide familiar with the transcript of McNulty’s comments. McNulty said he succeeded in sparing another U.S. attorney whose identity has not been revealed….

McNulty told investigators he did not see the list [of U.S. attorneys to be fired] until October, two months before the attorneys were fired….

McNulty asked during the interview last week to speak to the whole Bogden affair. McNulty told investigators he had hoped for some explanation for Bogden’s inclusion on the list because he saw no apparent reason to fire him.

He said he was told that Justice wanted to bring in someone with more energy for Nevada, a fast-growing district.

He “was told that Justice wanted to bring in someone with more energy?” Well, we know that Alberto Gonzales didn’t know anything about why Bogden was fired. And Kyle Sampson, the keeper of the list, claims not to know why Bogden made the list either. So who, in this equation, is “Justice?” Who was calling the shots? It certainly wasn’t McNulty.

U.S. Attorneys